Louis II, (born July 1, 1506—died Aug. 29, 1526, Mohács, Hung.) king of Hungary and of Bohemia from 1516, who was the last of the Jagiełło line to rule those countries and the last king to rule all of Hungary before the Turks conquered a large portion of it.

Louis II, portrait by an unknown artist after a portrait by Titian; in the Museum of Fine Arts, …

Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

The only son of Vladislas II of Hungary and Bohemia, Louis was sickly as a child but intelligent. To assure the succession, he was crowned king of Hungary (June 4, 1508) and of Bohemia (May 11, 1509), and became king on his father’s death (March 1516). He was declared of age to rule on Dec. 11, 1521. He married Maria of Austria the following January 13, and both pursued a life of riotous pleasure, soon disqualifying the teenage king from affairs of state.

The Ottoman Turks attacked Hungary in the summer of 1526, and Louis, with an inadequate force, advanced against them. He was routed at Mohács on the Danube (Aug. 29, 1526) and is said to have drowned fleeing the battlefield. After that defeat, Hungary was divided between the Turks and the Austrian Habsburgs.

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(August 29, 1526), decisive defeat of Hungary by the Turks, which marked the effective destruction of the Hungarian monarchy and paved the way for Habsburg and Turkish domination in Hungary. In 1521 the Turkish sultan Süleyman I (reigned 1520–66), taking advantage of Hungary’s...

When Vladislas died in 1516, his nine-year-old son was proclaimed king as Louis II. The defenses of the kingdom worsened, and in 1521 the new Ottoman sultan, Süleyman I (the Magnificent), demanded tribute from Louis. When the demand was rejected, Süleyman took Belgrade. Suddenly alive to the Turkish danger, the magnates voted to reestablish a standing army, but nothing was done to...

...through the Vienna accords of 1515. Providing for dynastic marriages, the accords opened the way for Habsburg succession in Bohemia and Hungary should the Jagiellonians die out. Eleven years later Louis II, the Jagiellonian king of Hungary and Bohemia, perished at Mohács fighting the Turks. Thus ended the Jagiellonian bloc.